Bowls of Blood and Strange Fire

This is Life as a Sacred Text, an expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished, justice-centered voyage into one of the world’s most ancient and holy books. We’re working our way through Leviticus these days. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here.

Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, took each one his pan, placed fire in them, put smoking-incense on it, and brought near, before the presence of God, strange fire, such as God had not commanded them.

And fire went out from the presence of God and consumed them, so that they died before the presence of God. (Leviticus 10:1-2)

It’s one of the great questions that has consumed (pun intended) commentators over the ages:

How on earth are we to understand what’s going on in this story?

There are a lot of different answers.